Spain Tells Sam Altman, Worldcoin To Shut Down Its Eyeball-Scanning Orbs

Spain has moved to block Sam Altman's cryptocurrency project Worldcoin, the latest blow to a venture that has raised controversy in multiple countries by collecting customers' personal data using an eyeball-scanning "orb." From a report: The AEPD, Spain's data protection regulator, has demanded that Worldcoin immediately ceases collecting personal information in the country via the scans and that it stops using data it has already gathered. The regulator announced on Wednesday that it had taken the "precautionary measure" at the start of the week and had given Worldcoin 72 hours to demonstrate its compliance with the order.

Worldcoin, co-founded by Altman in 2019, has been offering tokens of its own cryptocurrency to people around the world, in return for their consent to have their eyes scanned by an orb. The scans are used as a form of identification as it seeks to create a reliable mechanism to distinguish between humans and machines as artificial intelligence becomes more advanced.

Blue Spanish eyes

[VampireByte]

Blue Spanish eyes
Crypto's not falling from your Spanish eyes
Please, please don't buy
Remove the ocular data and stick to AI

Sam Altman haiku

[iAmWaySmarterThanYou]

Sam Altman, victim
Of fascist crypto haters;
Steal my data, bro!

I thought the method had

[Growlley]

something to do with a turtle on it's back?

Question

[quonset]

Have all these people, who insist it's fine to collect people's personal information, done the same? Have they handed over their personal information to other companies to use and sell? If it's no big deal, as they claim, that privacy doesn't exist, why is it they are so protective of others finding out where they go and who they meet?

Re:

[destined2fail1990]

Exactly. Why do they need hefty business contracts to do business or outright not use anything but something they own and control? Elon Musk doesn't even use Facebook for this very reason. Not only can the company see what you post, but they have your IP, your login patterns, and a host of other data often including your GPS location, contacts, and calendar, if not your photos and videos from your device.

Most apps request this data, hell most websites request this data. Now they want eye scans? That soun

Re:

[rta]

I don't entirely disagree, but in this case it sounds pretty hollow when coming from the governments who are themselves obsessed with biometric tracking.

e.g in Europe you're fingerprinted for a passport (and it's stored in the passport, though protected)
In the US you're not, (yet?), but your picture, the OG biometric, is in there and readable (w/ physical access to the passport which prints the components of the key in it)

(see e.g. https://stackoverflow.com/a/21... [stackoverflow.com])

Re:

[mjwx]

Have all these people, who insist it's fine to collect people's personal information, done the same? Have they handed over their personal information to other companies to use and sell? If it's no big deal, as they claim, that privacy doesn't exist, why is it they are so protective of others finding out where they go and who they meet?

The same people who insist "it's fine to give the shop my entire purchase history in exchange for these Magic Beans^W^W store points" will be the first to complain when the in-store telescreens start speaking directly to them with special offers.

I'm glad European governments are at least trying to protect our privacy, even if people are their own worst enemies in this regard.

Re:

[Can'tNot]

All of our systems are designed to protect the bodies and wealth of rich people. Most aspects of privacy are not something that they need to worry about or would even desire. Those aspects of privacy which they do have reason to care about, things like financial and medical privacy or peeping toms, those do have certain legal protections in place.

Irises

[systemd-anonymousd]

How many countries has he been kicked out of now? He was kicked out of Kenya for refusing to honor an order to stop scanning people's irises in exchange for his evil shitcoin

Protection racket

[TheStatsMan]

Let me scan your eyes so I can protect you from the evil AI (which I am also creating).

Both pretty silly

[JoshuaZ]

Worldcoin is by itself pretty silly as ideas go. It is also pretty silly to tell them to stop doing this when people are giving them the info in a completely consensual way. If people want to give their info for some cryptocurrency, go and let them. (I don't think that Worldcoin is going to be at all successful, but I don't think Spain's choice here is going to impact that either way substantially.)

Re: Both pretty silly

[sce7mjm]

I think part of the problem is that GDPR requires data controllers to REMOVE data at the subjects request. If the data has been used to train a neural network of sufficient size it may be identifiable in some sort of output, however it might be difficult or impossible to untrain a ML/AI system. So the requirement may never be satisfied. Iâ(TM)m pretty sure this is already happening.

Re:

[vbdasc]

It is also pretty silly to tell them to stop doing this when people are giving them the info in a completely consensual way. If people want to give their info for some cryptocurrency, go and let them.

In most countries that are not libertarian dystopias yet, one of the jobs of the government is to protect the less bright part of the population from themselves.

Why? What does having eye pictures hurt?

[OneOfMany07]

Just feels like luddites freaking out. "I don't know what they'll do, so they shouldn't have them!"

Is it just me?

[JustAnotherOldGuy]

"Spain Tells Sam Altman, Worldcoin To Shut Down Its Eyeball-Scanning Orbs"

Is it just me or are headlines getting weirder and weirder these days?

(And I mean everywhere, not just on slashdot.)

I keep confusing Altman with Bankman-Fried.

[waspleg]

Like, "isn't that guy in jail?"

Not yet .

Re:

[bill_mcgonigle]

Locutus of Borg is somewhat closer a comparison.

Also, stop noticing.